The title says it all. These various... ahem... projects by Microsoft are getting creepier and creepier every day.

I still think Palladium will fail, simply because Linux and the BSDs have now attained critical mass, and that most Linux users simply won't accept a closed hardware platform like it. Therefore, someone will step up to the plate and provide a non-Palladium hardware platform -- simply because there is money to be made in such a platform.

Now, for a serious question: has anybody got any idea on how to quickly disable RFIDs? I don't want to be followed around, whether it is by Microsoft, a retailer or anybody else. Please don't say: "Just microwave it", because some things with embedded RFIDs cannot be microwaved...

Actually almost all applications under the Microsoft Business Solutions Brand (Axapta is one of them), have been around for quite a few years and are used in all sectors of industry. Also most of them weren't devloped by Microsoft.

People seem to have got it in their heads that these tiny grain-of-rice sized RFID tags will let CIA satellites track your every movement and interaction via your underpants, which is just crazy.
The detection range of an RFID tag that you can comfortably include in an item of clothing is about 20-30cms, depending on the model and the size of the antenna. For the ones that are enclosed completely in glass capsules, it can be as little as 10cm - and if retailers want cheaper tags, this range is going to go down.

Since the range that a passive RFID tag can be read at is proportional to the amount of power that the reader puts out, anyone who wanted to read one of those tiny tags from 100m away would have to fire so much microwave radiation at you that you'd be too busy bursting into flames to care about the invasion of privacy. All an RFID tag really does is identify an item of clothing that you buy, not you. That item of clothing could be given as a gift, shared between partners or sold in a thrift store - the information you can get from tracking it is so abstract in it's focus and massive in it's volume as to be nearly useless.

Besides, stores already have a way of tracking you. They're called 'Credit Cards'.

The last RFID project I saw at Microsoft was their "Kitchen of the Future" on the Food Network. They had an interactive recipe that knew when each ingredient was placed onto the counter and automatically checked it off.

It was actually very cool. RFID itself is an extremely useful technology for retailers and consumers -- it just needs to be used responsibly. And consumers have to have the ability to not use it.